Media|NPR Gets $17 Million in Grants to Expand Coverage and Develop Digital Platform

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NPR Gets $17 Million in Grants to Expand Coverage and Develop Digital Platform

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NPR reporting on the typhoon that struck the Philippines last month appeared on NPR.org and NPR News mobile apps.CreditCreditDavid Gilkey/NPR

By Elizabeth Jensen

Dec. 15, 2013

NPR has amassed nearly $17 million in grants to increase substantially its coverage of education and global health and development, and finance creation of a new mobile and web platform that is expected to allow it to reach more listeners and better compete with outside aggregators of public radio content.

The grants, to be announced Monday, come just three months after NPR, which is facing a $6 million deficit in its budget of $183 million for the 2014 fiscal year, said it would cut 10 percent of its staff. An NPR spokeswoman said the new funding, because it is dedicated to projects, would not reduce the deficit.

Almost $10 million of the new funding will go to development of what NPR calls a “seamless local-national listening platform” that will allow listeners to switch smoothly from, say, a clock radio to a web-enabled car.

Some larger public radio stations, as well as NPR, already have mobile apps, but listeners who want to aggregate programs and podcasts from numerous sources often use outside services, such as TuneIn or Stitcher, both of which also include commercial content.

NPR’s new mobile app, which is being developed with six local stations and is expected to go into public testing next year, will wrap together on-demand local and national public radio content to create playlists, partly driven by algorithms and using geo-targeting to pull in local news.

Interactive and shareable, “this app is clearly, we think, going to be very appealing to younger consumers of our content,” said Charles Kravetz, general manager of WBUR-FM in Boston, a pilot partner.

“It is a play to take control of our own content and to control the platform and delivery system as much as we can,” he said.

WNYC in New York, also a pilot partner, is experiencing double-digit growth in digital listening, even as its radio listening remains “at an all-time high,” said Laura R. Walker, chief executive of its parent, New York Public Radio.

“We see a huge thirst in the digital space and we’re trying to figure out ways to create experiences for people here,” she said.

Importantly, the technology is also meant to allow public radio to sustain its relationship with donating members, said Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s chief content officer.

Local stations have complained in the past that in a digital era, listeners can bypass them and go straight to NPR’s existing app and website to listen to national programs.

The efforts to include local stations were important to Knight in deciding to give $5.4 million to the effort — $2 million to NPR and the rest in matching grants to the pilot stations — said Michael Maness, the foundation’s vice president for journalism and media innovation.

“In a digital age it’s important for them to coordinate,” he said. “The most dangerous thing at the moment in the system is to have it Balkanized.”

The reporting initiatives on education and global health and development will each receive $3 million to fund six-person reporting teams. One grant will also go to sustain Code Switch, NPR’s race, ethnicity and culture reporting initiative, which began in April.

Like Code Switch, the initiatives on education and global health — subjects chosen because other media outlets have cut back on such coverage — will produce both broadcast and online content.

“We’re really thinking digitally first,” said Mr. Wilson, with decisions initially on what stories to cover, and only then on which platforms to put them.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: NPR Gets $17 Million in Grants to Expand Coverage and Develop Digital Platform. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe